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Carlo led a very solitary life. At age nine he left home to become an agricultural worker and developed a great love of nature. At fifteen he began work as a butcher in a local abattoir in Verona. Then, during military service in the Spanish Civil War, the first signs of mental illness emerged. He was eventually admitted into a psychiatric hospital and in 1947 was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In 1957 the hospital opened an artists' studio where patients could experiment with creative activity. Carlo used pictures to communicate and he would draw or paint compulsively, sometimes for up to eight hours a day, using both sides of the paper. Carlo's pictures told the story of his past and were filled with images of birds, animals, flowers and agricultural equipment. Often he would fill a page by line drawing rows of incomplete words and numbers.

Untitled (double-sided) undated Gouache on paper Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection view larger image

Untitled (double-sided) undated Gouache on paper Musgrave Kinley Outsider Collection view larger image

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